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POPSWill Desperate Housewives Products Really Make Housewives Less Desperate? The reasoning behind advertising to housewives is that “buying a product appears as the true means of changing the unpleasant realities and low status of women’s work in the home” (Lipsitz). The hit T.V. show “Desperate Housewives has the tendency to glamorize the unpaid and unappreciated housewife. Throughout the show, we see very attractive women wearing nice clothing and full fledged makeup with very asthetically pleasing homes...
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POPSWomen in Film Collage by Katelyn Here are a few examples of major motion pictures where women are exploited in one way or another. In "Grease", Sandy changes her mannerisms and the way she dresses to impress Danny. In "American Beauty", Angela is put into the stereotypical "whore" status even though she is a virgin solely due to her sexual appearance. In "My Fair Lady", Eliza is swayed into becoming a true "lady" and changes her ways completely for society's acceptance. Looking at these last two examples, the "Madonna-Whore" dichotomy is truly exemplefied...
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POPSSex, Skin, & a Whole Lotta Sin: Collage by Jen M This collage shows the very sexual and provocative lifestyles of the girlfriends. The girls are depicted as the epitome of sexuality in their racy and barely-there outfits flaunting their large breasts and slim figures every chance they can. But what does this behavior, which some would ostracize as self-degrading and disrespectful, do for these blondes? It provides a medium for them to be recognized and to gain attention, particularly from the male audience. "Sexuality provides a resource that can be used to get attention and communicate instantly." 1 If these ladies wore blazers revealing little skin with other conservative apparel, they would not be considered "sex icons" and therefore would not gain as much attention or have the reputation they have today. Ultimately, this collage proves that sex, sin and skin sells in modern society when it comes to females gaining attention, popularity, and fame.
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POPSBeauty & the Geek Collage This collage represents the feminine beauty ideals and stereotypes shown in Beauty and the Geek. It is based on Laurie Ouellette's piece about the founding of Cosmopolitan magazine and its impact on American women, "Inventing the Cosmo Girl: Class Identity and Girl-Style American Dreams." Ouellette discusses the personal life of Helen Gurley Brown, Cosmopolitan's creator, and the ideologies and beliefs that led her to start a magazine promoting femininity and sexuality. She writes, "Brown's reworking of American Dream mythology involved the construction and reconstruction of a desirable self, the presentation of identity as self-made, the valorization of femininity as a creative production, the partial subversion of natural class distinctions, the refusal of Victorian sexual norms, and the expression of multiple hardships and frustrations" (125). This description of the invention of the Cosmo...
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POPSBeauty & Image: The Reality This collage depicts the fact that society has imposed the perception that beauty and image is important for women. However, just like Oprah's belief, there are good and bad ways to reach the ideal body. For instance, Jean Kilbourne in "The More You Subtract, The More You Add", agrees with Oprah that the images that society portrays of beauty has a negative impact on some women. Kilbourne states,"Thus many girls spend enormous amounts of time and energy attempting to achieve something that is not only trivial but also completely unattainable" (Kilbourne 260). There are incorrect manners of reaching the desired body, as depicted on the right side, which include dangerous diet products and eating disorders. Oprah promotes the use of healthy dieting and exercise on her show; therefore, she also follows the idea that being skinny and "perfect" is not necessary to live a good life.
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POPSSex Sells & You won't succeed without it: Darling C's collage on media & women
Today's American culture stresses heterosexuality. When looking at women, we notice that in order to attract the opposite sex, they need to make sure their looks are appealing to what men want. This begins at early age. An article by Mary Rogers, entitled "Hetero Barbie?," mentions the influence of Barbie on young girls. With the Barbie image, girls are taught how to dress and style their hair, all in the hopes of attracting a man. The collage above demonstrates these images in adult women as they are portrayed in the media. When reading a fashion magazine, there are tips on how to apply make-up, what to wear for the new season, and how to keep a man. Sometimes I wonder if women are ever allowed to simply be themselves and maybe sport a natural look. That would definitely be a crime in the fashion industry. Sex sells. The television shows, magazine photos, and musical references above show us that if a woman does not have sex appeal...
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POPSDesperate Housewives Desperate for Idealistic Families Collage It is apparent in each of the four main female characters of Desperate Housewives that “The equilibrium of a happy, stable family is constantly there in the background, but is never achieved” (Fiske). Each woman claims at one point to want an ideal family life but their actions in the series never fully allow them to achieve this desire. Gabrielle for example moved to a suburban town without any intention of becoming a “housewife”. She had an affair with the gardener, and her husband Carlos took her back. They decided to start a family in hope to mend their relationship but needed a surrogate mother to do so. Carlos had an affair with the surrogate mother and the baby she was carrying turned out not to be Gabrielle’s and Carlos’s. Bree, the perfectionist strives for a picture perfect family perhaps the most out of the foursome. She’s polite, well spoken, and a perfect host; however she has two rebellious children and suspected murderer for a husband.
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POPS Post #4 Women's Source of Power “Raisins”, an episode of South Park in which Wendy breaks up with Stan and the boys take him to Raisins, a restaurant similar to Hooters, to try and forget about her, portrays the type of hegemony women have over men. The Raisin girls have power over their male customers because they are attractive, wearing next to nothing, and they pretend to be interested in the males to get bigger tips. According to James Lull, “Hegemony implies willing agreement by people to be governed by principles, rules and laws they believe to operate in their best interests…,” (63). The male customers are agreeing to be overpowered by the attractive women’s bodies. The majority of hegemony issues in social settings dealing with masculinity and femininity award men the power; however, most men’s sexual desire for women give women a source of power...from Tara's South Park blog
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POPSPatriarchy in "The Office" “The Office” embodies many of the hegemonic norms pertaining to patriarchy and gender roles. As Alan Johnson describes patriarchy, “It’s about the standards of feminine beauty and masculine toughness, images of feminine vulnerability and masculine protectiveness, of older men coupled with young women, of elderly women alone. It’s about defining women and men as opposites, about the ‘naturalness’ of male aggression, competition, and dominance and of female caring, cooperation, and subordination. It’s about the valuing of masculinity and maleness and the devaluing of femininity and femaleness” (Johnson, 94). These views make constant appearances in “The Office.” In the show, the men are seen as aggressive and outgoing, while the women are seen as gentle and passive. The men are in control of almost everything that goes on in the office, besides the all female party planning committee. From Spencer's Gender & Pop Culture Blog on "The Office"
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POPS"Not that there's anything wrong with that"...or is there? For this post I chose to do a collage of images based on the episode "The Outing." In this episode homosexuality is a topic of great analysis. Using humor "Seinfeld" created a show based on a mistaken "outing" of George and Jerry as a homosexual couple by a student journalist. Throughout the episode George and Jerry do everything in their power to clear up the misunderstanding and tell everyone that they are not gay..."not that there's anything wrong with that." This quote has become very popular since the show aired because it "serves in part to mock standard liberal attitudes toward homosexuality" (Raymond). This supports the queer theory suggested by Raymond that sexuality are cultural inventions or choices, and not something that is essential to the individual. But at the same time, did the episode also serve as a groudbreaking episode in which homosexuality was brought to the forefront by "Seinfeld" while also making society more comfortable with the topic as a whole? From Mark B
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POPSCollage Time- Cultural messages about sexuality from Family Guy This collage is made from a bunch of images that show the way sexuality is depicted in popular culture via Family Guy. This collage has a dual purpose in that it shows a pop culture medium illustrating aspects of sexuality and also plays up the stereotypes that are used within our culture. Look to see how the images in this collage actively portray "the slut" or "kinky sex", the way "hot girls" should look, or what a "M.I.L.F is, as well as the "beer drinking-womanising man"or what "gay" images are. It is interesting to see how without any words at all these images portray a strong message. Hope you like it. From Jess B's http://wgspopculture.blogspot.com/ "What Are We Really Laughing About" blog on the show "Family Guy"
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POPSAmazing- Corporate Branding History Identity & Logo Design This site is amazing to see--especially when you give any of the logos some thought -- just look at one-- do you have a particular emotion? non-happy ones count too! Do you have a personal memory or connection that you thought of when you saw one of the logos? I found it on StumbleUpon. Corporate Internet Branding History Identity & Logo Design
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POPSGender & Pop Culture Student Blog: Southpark One of the first as I try to clip some student work so you can visit :o) We have a "guest contributor" page to give credit to those who have taken the time to comment on student blogs at http://gpccontribute.blogspot.com :o)
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POPSWomen as Property...with a wall? Interesting article related to the hierarchies that prison reproduces (based on class discussion today), which mirror the systems of dominance and subordination in non-incarcerated society "at large." The class generally saw the "woman as property" issue relegated to history, but that the gender norms in prision were not so historically relegated....here's divorce court's take on modern gender hierarchies.
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POPSEric is Blogging...Here! Just posted this one to the professor-blog...hmmm...maybe you'll see something else in a moment!?!?! If this isn't an endorsement for a blogging service, then I don't know what would constitute one...unless of course eric changes blog services in the near future....I had never heard of vox!
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POPSERIC! I just emailed you- regarding higher ed Hi Eric- It's one of the latest clips that I referenced in the email regarding your comment about clipmarks and higher education; therefore, I wanted to make it easy for you to find the clip and alert you to the email :o). Thanks! Jessie
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POPSUpdated blog links (for the BIG BLOG EXPERIMENT!) Blogging Pop Culture in College Someone used clipmarks to clip my students' list of blogs from a google notebook that was slightly out of date- just wanted to give an update in case anyone on clipmarks would like to participate in the experiment! Feel free to comment on any and all of the student blogs...you needn't be an expert on their topics or on anything else for that matter! We're blogging about gender and popular culture and doing it as a community journalism/public education project (think tent state, not a public service ad :o).
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POPSSo these are the ads that my course blog (the one linked to my students) generated? I'm not really even sure what to say about this one...it's kind of funny, yet sad at the same time! I'll find out if my students feel like weighing in on this one :o) Perhaps there's a key word or two that triggered the mental health stuff... Otherwise, I just have to wonder if this assumption for the ads simply predicated on the (assumed) age-group of the bloggers? Hardly deep or meaningful in the basic so-what-they're-just-adwords-sense; however, we're going to start discussing advertising in various formats of popular culture next week, and this set of ads rather sadly shows just how influential the media can be (to the detriment) of young-adults' mental health... First...shamelessly advertise product, service, etc... Second...shamelessly advertise the treatment for harm done by those ads and media the ads were meant to generate revenue for.... Third...make money on steps one and two... Fourth...repeat...
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POPSFeminist Intervention into the Anna Nicole Smith story- it's about time! It's about time that someone took a vastly different approach to understanding this person and her life in relation to the "American Culture" that so loved to hate her. Unfortunately, every story I've found has been about why, how, who, and who to blame, yet very rarely are there any articles on why it is that the "scandal du jour" reflects our own culture...in other words....Anna Nicole Smith, and the many other women who sougth the very same type of fame and fortune, illustrate far more about WHO WE ARE (Hello? who the hell made her famous in the first place...no one would have wached her 'reality' show if she was as hideous as so many claim she was)!!! So, if it was all "her" she would have been institutionalized; however, she wasn't living in isolation, far too many enjoyed watching, and far too few will ever admit any relationship between her life and death and popular US culture!
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POPSBeautiful! A picture of the Stellar Spire in the Eagle Nebula is taken by the ACS and released with a series of images celebrating the Hubble's 15th anniversary. This image is of such high resolution that it could be blown up to billboard size and still offer exceptional detail. Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team
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POPSYou're going to love my new course-I'm teaching popular culture and all 28 of us will be blogging it THE Website... I'm the professor and we're going to be blogging all semester about popular culture (me and my 28 Students...very cool!) Feel free to link, add feedback, and certainly visit the student sites...we're just getting started...so things will change over the Spring 2007 semester rapidly!!! We'll be consciously in a dialogue with the many elements of pop culture via this project and each student will be blogging (a critical analysis blog) on the topic of his/her choice! Fun project!!! Love teaching!
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POPSHi Online Friends...perhaps you can help my munchkin in his jumping rope for heart! Hi Everyone, My son Logan is super-enthusiastic about this project...he's a kindergartener and it's just super-sweet that he's so into doing good stuff! The clip is straight from the site that they link in the emails, so you may want to go to http://www.kintera.org/faf/r.asp?t=4&i=201236&u=201236-162854750 (otherwise you might end up at Kintera.org's main site) . I realize it's a reach, but if you could help, it would be awesome!!!
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